Chapter Five
He caught her. Of course he did. He caught her hard and close, because she had nearly collided with him at speed, and one of his hands came around her back while the other held her by the upper arm to keep her upright.
For a breath she did not care about anything except that she was herself again.
Her cheek was against his chest. She could hear the quickened beat beneath it.
One of her hands had grabbed onto his prince’s robe at his shoulder as she breathed heavily.
The world had stopped reeling. The room was a room again.
The floor was where a floor ought to be.
Her own legs were under her. Her own eyes saw what they should.
Then sense returned, in pieces.
His hand against her bare back.
Her own body with nothing on it.
The fact that she was pressed against him and had not let go.
Ina drew in a breath and lifted her head.
Karai was looking down at her.
He had gone still in a way she knew too well by now.
His face did not change much, but whatever control usually sat there had been driven thin.
His gaze dropped once, lower, involuntarily and only for an instant, before returning to her face.
That alone told her everything. The rest was in his mouth, in the set of his shoulders, in the effort it took him not to move his hands.
He turned his head a little, waiting for her to speak or move away or ask for the sort of distance they had both been keeping for weeks.
Something in her turned over.
Not fear. Not exactly. Something nearer to the edge of it, but not the same. A live current. A dangerous one. It ran from the place where he held her down through her spine and left her standing too still.
Neither of them spoke.
She could have stepped back. He could have released her. They did neither.
The books lay open on the table behind him. Her dress was crumpled on the floor somewhere far from their feet. The whole library, with its shelves and records and polished tables, had narrowed to the space between his body and hers.
When she swallowed, she felt him notice.
That made it worse. Or better. She could not tell which.
At last Karai said, his voice lower than before, “You did it.”
It was exactly the right thing to say in that moment, and perhaps for that reason it made her reckless. She inhaled, saw the strain of restraint still written plainly across his face, and lifted her hand to his cheek.
His eyes narrowed and his mouth opened, just barely, the smallest hint of surprise.
She rose onto her toes and kissed him.
It was not a fierce kiss. Not at first. It was light and brief and careful, as if some part of her still expected the moment to break under its own weight. But he made a sound against her mouth that was nearly her name, and when he kissed her back, all that carefulness was lost.
His arms came around her waist and neck and held there, firm enough to tell the truth of him.
Ina grabbed at his shoulders. The weeks between them vanished so fast she could not have measured the change.
It had all been waiting under the surface, all the coolness and watchfulness and leaving rooms too quickly and speaking in steady voices because anything else felt inappropriate.
He kissed her again, with none of the gentleness she had begun with and all the desire she had already seen in his face.
She answered him in kind. The library, the books, the lesson, the whole difficult business of queenship and court custom fell away until there was only the press of him and the fact that she had decided in that exact moment to stop running from what she wanted.
He drew back only for a moment, only far enough to look at her, fire burning in his eyes already.
“Ina,” he started, too near a growl. This time a warning, not a question.
She put a hand against his chest. “Don’t start being reasonable now.”
The last thread of control in him snapped.
He bent and lifted her, and she let him.
The nearest desk was wide, old, and of nobler build than the use they made of it then.
Books had to be pushed aside in haste. One slid to the floor with a hard slap of leather against wood, and neither of them spared it so much as a glance.
She was on it before she had quite gathered her breath, and Karai had himself lowered between her thighs before she could blink.
The look on his face made speech difficult, and whatever she had meant to say went no further than his name. He bent to her with a hunger made forceful by too many weeks of caution, and the first touch of his mouth drew a shudder through her so sudden her hands tightened in his hair.
The shaking in her legs started almost immediately with his tongue flicking persistently at a spot that had stayed untouched for too long. Her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth opened, head tilting back, the noises coming out of her almost desperate without her meaning them to be.
He groaned at the sound of them, working to unbuckle himself even as he pressed his tongue fully against her.
Desire had been with her all along, banked and denied and managed for the sake of peace and fairness and sense.
Now, with him between her legs and no one else in the room to consider, it rose too fast to be tamed.
She caught at his shoulders and pulled at him with a breathless urgency.
“Get up,” she whispered.
He stood as she commanded, placing himself at her slit and stretching her slowly apart. She moaned at the familiar deep weight of him, her head beginning to tip back again.
He did not allow that.
One hand reached around the back of her neck to pull her closer, keeping her eyes fixed on his. Then, as if the temptation was too great for him to resist, his thumb moved to her throat, gripping gently, though tightly enough to be possessive.
She gasped at the electrifying pressure there. And then at the pressure of his lips against hers. At the pressure everywhere.
He was taking his time to remember the tightness of her grip.
When he kissed her again, it was with the same temperance he had fought to keep for so long, though now it trembled at the edges.
He held still a moment longer to look at her, as if reminding himself that she had started this, though now that she had, he would be sure to finish it.
Then he murmured, voice rough, “What do you want, my queen?”
She didn’t answer, instead pulling at him to move, but he lifted his head and looked down at her through narrowed lids, keeping still.
He gave her only pressure. Only the length of him deep inside her, his body so hard against hers.
It had been too long. He needed to remind her what she had been missing. Needed to remind her how he could make her feel.
“You,” she finally gasped, annoyance wrapped around something near to begging.
Only when he was sufficiently amused by her frustration did he move inside her, though he kept his rhythm agonizingly slow, enough to know that she felt every ridge of him through her moans.
And, for that matter, through how damp the table under her quickly became.
She tipped her head back again, and this time he let her, stroking her neck with his thumb, a sound between a purr and a whimper escaping her.
All the way in.
All the way out.
Every motion drew another splash and another sound from her, quieter ones at first. Then less quiet.
Karai watched her with the intensity of someone who meant to learn her all over again. One hand slid between her legs, touching almost too lightly. That made her want him more. Want him deeper. Want him unleashed.
“Harder,” she whispered. She met his indigo eyes directly and added something else too, low and bold.
His eyes widened at the crass language, just before smoldering desire overtook amusement again. “As you wish.”
He drew back only long enough to turn her and pull her down with him into a different angle, one that left her braced fully against the table, her arms drawn behind her, one of his hands firm at her waist.
The last of his tame steadiness burned away, and he drove himself back in, beating hard against the back of her grip.
She cried out then, one single vulgar word.
He regretted only slightly that she couldn’t see his satisfied smirk. He pushed harder against her, so deep it rattled the desk and left her breathless. The sensuality between them turned into something raw and urgent, moans becoming loud cries, the feel of him spiking a shift in her.
What had begun in tormenting patience gave itself over to undisguised need.
Her heels lifted from the ground, leaving her on tiptoe, as that shift coursed through her body, spiraling outward into delirious rapture.
The room filled with the sounds of them, with the hard pull of breath and the scrape of wood and the wild, broken cries neither of them bothered to hide.
Ina felt the pleasure in her climb too quickly to resist, and she succumbed to it with a quivering cry, pulsing hard, a rush that left every muscle in her body trembling.
He leaned over her, as if he meant to keep her from breaking apart beneath it, though holding her so close pushed him in deeper, her body clamping onto his. He gave way. A curse left his lips, and then a groan, ringing out just before their motion stilled.
The sole sound that followed for some minutes afterward was of little wet drops landing on the wooden floor beneath them.
Neither of them moved from that position for some time.
Karai rested against her, his breath unsteady at her shoulder.
Ina kept her eyes closed, not yet ready to return to the ordinary world of bookshelves and lamplight and clothing fallen where it had been forgotten.
The room came back only when Karai loosely raised a hand to summon a few pillows and a blanket to them, then dropped to the ground, pulling Ina down to sit with him, his back leaning against one of the table legs.
He gathered her close against him, wrapping her in his arms. She let him take the effort of keeping her upright. His head rested on top of hers. One hand moved along her back in slow, absent strokes, enjoying the feel of her bare skin next to his.
After a while, he said quietly, “I’ve missed you.”
Ina shut her eyes. “And I you. But...”
He understood before she found the rest of it. She knew he would. He always did. His hand moved once between her shoulders, steady and comforting.
“Ina… you brought the sunlight to my underground, and to my heart with it.”
He spoke so gently that the sound enveloped her as fully as the warm blanket.
“It was my destiny to love you, and that destiny has been fulfilled a thousand times over. I won’t deny you love, even if that means it’s shared. What power I have is not enough to change what you’re owed. I meant what I said to you, before I even knew the whole truth of it.
Half your heart is more than enough.”
Ina lifted her head at that and looked at him, giving him the same gentleness. “It’s not half my heart, Karai. It’s the whole thing. But…” she sighed, “Derran has the whole thing too. And I don’t know how to make that fair.”
He held her gaze, then gave one small nod, as if he had long since done the work of accepting that might be the answer and only needed to hear her say it plainly.
“It might not be fair,” he murmured, honest to a fault. “But I’ve accepted that he’ll be around more than I might care to see him.” Then he gave a half-smile. “His jokes barely annoy me anymore.”
Ina laughed, the sound muffled by how close they still were. “That can’t possibly be true.”
“It’s mostly untrue,” he admitted. “Though I bear them with dignity.”
“You don’t bear anything with dignity when it comes to Derran.”
“Well. That’s because he refuses to behave in a way that invites dignity.”
She laughed again, and this time he did too, briefly, the sound low in his chest. Then the laughter faded, and they stayed where they were a little longer, holding on to the quiet they had made together before the rest of their lives came tumbling too loudly back in.